SHAMBHALA SUN NOVEMBER 2006
54
It is necessary to take a leap in terms of trusting ourselves.There will still be confusion
taking place, of course! But there is also a glimpse of openness and unlimited potentiality.
So taking the bodhisattva vow is a real commitment based
on the realization of the suffering and confusion of oneself and
others. The only way to break the chain reaction of confusion
and pain and to work our way outward into the awakened state
of mind is to take responsibility ourselves. If we do not deal
with this situation of confusion, if we do not do something
about it ourselves, nothing will ever happen. We cannot count
on others to do it for us. It is our responsibility, and we have the
tremendous power to change the course of the world’s karma.
So in taking the bodhisattva vow, we are acknowledging that
we are not going to be instigators of further chaos and misery
in the world, but we are going to be liberators, bodhisattvas,
inspired to work on ourselves as well as with other people.
There is tremendous inspiration in having decided to work
with others. We no longer try to build up our own grandios-
ity. We simply try to become human beings who are genuinely
able to help others; that is, we develop precisely that quality of
selflessness which is generally lacking in our world. Following
the example of Gautama Buddha, who gave up his kingdom
to dedicate his time to working with sentient beings, we are
finally becoming useful to society.
We each might have discovered some little truth, such as the
truth about poetry or the truth about photography or the truth
about amoebas, which can be of help to others. But we tend to
use such a truth simply to build up our own credentials. Work-
ing with our little truths, little by little, is a cowardly approach.
In contrast, the work of a bodhisattva is without credentials.
We could be beaten, kicked, or just unappreciated, but we re-
main kind and willing to work with others. It is a totally non-
credit situation. It is truly genuine and very powerful.
Taking this Mahayana approach of benevolence means giv-
ing up privacy and developing a sense of greater vision. Rather
than focusing on our own little projects, we expand our vision
immensely to embrace working with the rest of the world, the
rest of the galaxies, the rest of the universes.
Putting such broad vision into practice requires that we re-
late to situations very clearly and perfectly. In order to drop our
self-centeredness, which both limits our view and clouds our
actions, it is necessary for us to develop a sense of compassion.
Traditionally this is done by first developing compassion to-
ward oneself, then toward someone very close to us, and finally
toward all sentient beings, including our enemies. Ultimately
we regard all sentient beings with as much emotional involve-
ment as if they were our own mothers. We may not require
such a traditional approach at this point, but we can develop
some sense of ongoing openness and gentleness. The point is
that somebody has to make the first move.
Usually we are in a stalemate with our world: “Is he going to
say he is sorry to me first, or am I going to apologize to him first?”
But in becoming a bodhisattva we break that barrier: we do not
wait for the other person to make the first move; we have decided
to do it ourselves. People have a lot of problems and they suffer
a great deal, obviously. And we have only half a grain of sand’s
worth of awareness of that suffering happening in this country
alone, let alone in the rest of the world. Millions of people in the
world are suffering because of their lack of generosity, discipline,
patience, exertion, meditation, and transcendental knowledge.
The point of making the first move by taking the bodhisattva
vow is not to convert people to our particular view, necessarily;
the idea is that we should contribute something to the world
simply by our own way of relating, by our own gentleness.
In taking the bodhisattva vow, we acknowledge that the
world around us is workable. From the bodhisattva’s point of
view it is not a hard-core, incorrigible world. It can be worked
Vajrapani, the bodhisattva who symbolizes the Buddha’s power
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